


By the skin of my teeth you restored my fate

by Stolperzunge



Category: The Pacific (TV)
Genre: (they don't suffer from it; no worries), American Politics, Anger, Death (just in general), Domestic Fluff, Growing Old Together, HIV/AIDS Crisis, M/M, Memories of the War, Period-Typical Racism (implied), Post-Canon Fix-It, Post-War, Reminiscing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-02
Updated: 2020-08-02
Packaged: 2021-03-06 07:00:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,930
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25669336
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Stolperzunge/pseuds/Stolperzunge
Summary: He steps inside the bar and hears his laugh, loud and roaring as he bends over the billiard table. Eugene’s mind blanks. His anger grows so big that it almost consumes him, washes hot and blindingly over him, so that for a second he can’t see a thing, other than a piercing white light.---Eugene has to deal with the anger that the war inflicted in him and which follows him home. He has to learn how to live with it, overcoming it with the years. Thankfully he has Merriell by his side who helps him to stay calm whenever the state of the world makes him feel utterly helpless and angry at times.
Relationships: Merriell "Snafu" Shelton/Eugene Sledge
Comments: 10
Kudos: 15
Collections: Sledgefu Week 2020





	By the skin of my teeth you restored my fate

**Author's Note:**

> Sledgefu Week Day 6: Healing 
> 
> I wrote the outline for this the night after the prompts got published, so it makes me slightly mad that I didn't manage to post it in time >:( But I hope you enjoy it either way!  
> I have not much to say this time, other than that it gets a bit political, but no crazy opinions are being dropped. War is bad, Reagan was an asshole so many people deserved so much better... Apart from that it's just two boys healing and growing old together :)
> 
> Of course this is based on the TV show and not on the real people. English isn’t my first language.
> 
> Enjoy!

Eugene grows angry after the war. He does so for a bunch of reasons. 

First of all he’s angry at himself. Angry at that callow kid, in his pristine white shirt and his neat side part, who’s only responsibility it was to take his dog for a walk. That _child_ , who had sat in his father’s office and cried, because he wasn’t allowed to join the war. Who thought that learning how to kill people, being shipped to the other side of the world, to execute the orders of the men in the high chairs, would be honorable. That it would make a man out of him.

Eugene wants to grab that stupid kid and scream at him, scream some sense into him. 

That fragile little boy would shake like a leaf in the wind, if he told him about the hills of Peleliu, when he ran across the battlefield with that stretcher over his shoulder, bullets flying from all directions, bombs hitting meters away from his feet. How he saw two of the men he admired the most, lay dead and cold on one of those stretchers. Alive in one second, dead in the other. And the war just continued. He just continued.

That child would probably turn sick, if Eugene told him about Okinawa. The feeling of warm blood on his face when that woman and her baby exploded right before his eyes. Maybe he wouldn’t believe him, when Eugene told him, what he had _become_. How anger had consumed his every thought, until he wasn’t capable of anything else than cursing and hating and killing.

Because after all, Eugene was that kid, and he wouldn’t have believed that he could turn into this person. That he could change that much, that he barely recognizes himself in the mirror in his parents bathroom, after he had heaved his welcome-home-meal into the shiny toilet. The food was too rich, the bathroom too clean, his family too ideal.

He grows angry at his parents. 

At his father for shooting him these sidelong glances, which convey more of his ongoing sadness over the loss of Eugene’s innocence and youth than he would ever tell him. Which somehow makes it worse. He doesn’t tell Eugene, that he has changed, but Eugene knows that he thinks just that.

He’s angry at his mother because she straight up ignores that anything had happened at all. As if those years he had been gone meant nothing. Just a little inconvenience. She wants him to follow the plans she has laid out for him. Bugs him about getting a job, moving on with his life. She wants to see him prosper, so that she can tell her friends that everything went back to _normal_ in her family. 

He tries, he tries to please them, by applying for university but that girl at the information desk makes him feel like a fool. Like he has wasted his time by going into combat, when he could have worked his way up the chain, collecting some qualities and skills he could continue after the war. Instead he had went into field and slaughtered humans, so the men with the higher ranks could continue their studies. He’s too angry at the system to join it again, just now.

At first he thinks, that he can’t talk about it. That they are all too far removed from him. His old father, his hidebound mother, Edward and Sid who went through the same stuff, Eugene had went through, but who seem so unbothered by it. Both of them engaged, owning a job, a scholarship. And Eugene gets angry at them, because he can’t relate to them anymore. 

The only person he could always turn to, who always related to him in all that agony and sadness, lives only a few hours away from them, but at the same time he's unreachable. Eugene asks himself if he feels the same, if he too feels angry, if he too feels the pain. He asks himself if the other ever had the same feeling for him. The feeling Eugene would call love.

But that person had left him and Eugene is angry at him. He’s so angry at Merriell for leaving him on that train that it makes him feel like he loses himself even more, than he did back in the war. 

But nothing lasts forever. His childhood hadn’t last forever. Bootcamp didn’t last forever. The rain on Okinawa, the war, the nightmares he gets. Sooner or later all of that would end. Like his time with Merriell had ended, those sweets months they had spent together in China.

The first anger Eugene is able to shake off his shoulders is the one directed at the education system. His mother is right, sitting around and doing nothing won’t take him anywhere, so he starts his studies and moves out of his parents house for the semester and that is the best part about the whole ordeal.

Being away from Mobile heals him. His old self doesn’t follow him around wherever he goes anymore. His college peers don’t know who he had been before the war, they just know his current self and somehow that’s freeing. 

When he comes back home during the semester breaks, he’s able to look his father in the eye again and he isn’t angry at him anymore. He at least tries to understand Eugene, understands, that his son has changed and that they would have to learn how to live with his new self. Like Eugene has to learn it himself.

But his annoyance towards his mother stays. She looks at him at times as if she could only recognize a stranger in him, who swallowed her poor little boy up and who could spat him out any minute. She still wants for the old Eugene to return, but that boy had died somewhere on the beach of Peleliu when the glory of war broke over him. When he saw the bodies of all the dead Marines stacked over each other and his comrades who climbed over them to get off the beach. How he had crawled for his life wishing he was back home in his mother's arms. He is sure that he would have been dead for good, if it hadn’t been for the amazing men who helped him to survive. 

Ack-Ack and Hillbilly who guided them, who kept them safe, showed him what true leadership looked like. Burgie and Leyden and Jay who helped him keep his mental health somewhat in place, true friendships formed during the worst time of his life.

That curly haired Cajun, who looked out for him, who shared his smokes with him and who he finally shared his first kiss with. Wouldn’t it have been for him, Eugene is sure, he would have just died. Dropped dead at the lack of a soul inside his body.

Finally the anger towards Sid disappears completely. Eugene realizes, that he had been unfair for thinking, that Sidney didn’t suffer from war. He did, he told him so. His anger and hurt simply manifested in different ways, just because he was able to let someone in, to fall in love with Mary, shortly after he had returned, didn’t mean that he was cured from the war. 

Eugene begins to feel happy for his friend, who helps him to heal, who tells him the nightmares would lessen, as would the pain. He wants to see Sid happy. They got separated during their most formative years, spend them in the same hell and got out of it as different people. They have to get to know each other again, but it was nice to know, that Eugene didn’t struggle on his own.

What didn’t really wither was his anger at Edward Jr. It makes Eugene angry to see how his brother treated the memories of war. How arrogant he got, when he shared his experiences, how he bragged about all the stuff he had done in Italy, as if the war had just been an exciting adventure on his way to adulthood. A small passage in his course of life, which he would spent with his wife and his kids happily ever after, nothing to fuss over. 

All the while the war kept Eugene in a tight embrace, even if he slowly learned how to live with it, he could never shake it. He could never live his life like his brother did. He would never get married, he would never have kids. He isn't even sure, if he could ever fall in love again, after he had been craved and craved in return with all his being, body and mind. He is _certain_ , that he would never love another person like he had loved Merriell, his Merriell.

He'd stay on his own, becoming the strange bachelor of the family, who’s relatives would always wonder, why he hadn’t found someone and his mother would tell him for the rest of her life, how much of a disappointment it was, that he didn’t bring no wife and children into the family. 

Eugene wants to hate himself for it, but he can’t. There had been a time when he did, before the war. When he had those assumptions about himself, but tried to hold them in, telling himself that he would end up in hell if he didn't. But he couldn't have cared less when Merriell had kissed him for the first time and the times after that. When the night fell over them and every social rule seemed so far away and not even real. When Merriell had told him that he loved him, Eugene couldn’t believe that this pure, blissful feeling should be something he wasn’t allowed to experience. 

He decides to stay in the west after school. He tells his family, that it’s because of the wildlife, the botanic. But really it’s because it is _different_ there. He may never be allowed to get married, or hold a potential lover’s hand in public, let alone kiss him, but he finds people who think like him, who share the same values. He couldn’t find those people in Mobile, not so many of them, that it makes him feel safe and so he leaves.

He barely sets foot into town, into his first own apartment, his small office on the campus, the gay bar two streets down from him, when he bumps into Merriell.

He steps inside the bar and hears his laugh, loud and roaring as he bends over the billiard table. Eugene’s mind blanks. His anger grows so big that it almost consumes him, washes hot and blindingly over him, so that for a second he can’t see a thing, other than a piercing white light. 

But as intense and immediate the anger had come over him, it had disappeared again. It gets taken over by the feeling of warmth and adoration when he sees how Merriell runs his hand through his hair. It’s curly and unruly as it had been in the war, when they couldn’t get a proper hair cut in weeks. He remembers its smell, remembers Mer’s quiet snoring when his head was tucked under Eugene’s chin, while he slept, the most peaceful he could ever be at war. Letting Eugene watch over him.

Didn’t he wish this whole time for those feelings to return? The first year after the war, when he had lived under the roof which should be his home, but didn’t offer him any comfort no more, causing him to spiral, to lose his fate as he thought about how God treated his children. How he let crimes allow to happen, that atrocious, that they would scar humankind forever, like it had happened in Germany. The war with Japan on those islands he never heard of before, but which were engraved into his memory now, where civilians dropped dead like flies. And years later there was another war, this time in Korea and the whole world held its breath, as they watched the conflict between the US and Russia intensifying. 

Year after year, decade after decade, century after century, the same game. Which God could allow that to happen? How could he find happiness again in a world like this? 

The only feeling Eugene possessed back then was his anger, his behavior was destructive. He didn’t talk to anyone, shut everybody out of his life. Indulged into self-pitying. Wishing this whole time, that Merriell would return, that he would scoop him out of this misery, but he had not been ready then. 

Now he had started to heal, made amends with himself, talked to his friends and started to build his own live. He tried to find warmth and happiness in his own four walls and in his job, but there was always something missing. A longing which could not be satisfied. Eugene lost most of his anger, but he didn’t find any new source of love. That kind of love that made him blind with anger because all he wanted was to be together with the other again. 

Merriell looks up from the billiard cue in his hand and meets Eugene’s eyes.  
It’s strange, his heart remembers the feelings it had for Merriell so clearly, that they’re back in a heartbeat, so that Eugene is once again consumed with them. 

He nods in his direction, casually, as if this whole situation isn’t extremely strange, as if this is not a giant coincidence. Eugene’s body acts on its own, his mind has no say in this, when he walks over to the other man. He considers how he should greet him, would a handshake be enough, would Merriell feel depreciated if he only shook his hand? He stands in front of him and he looks the same he did a few years ago, clean shaven like he had been on that train. Eugene offers his hand and Snafu grabs his forearm, pulling him into a hug, clapping his back. They sit down by the bar where Merriell drinks a strange foreign beer and Eugene sips a long drink. 

Merriell appears calm now, settled. Eugene had thought how he would be like out of war for all those years. Even during the war he tried to picture Merriell in the civilian world, failing while doing so. Only when they got closer to each other, did he began to see more of Merriell’s true self, buried under the hard abrasive shell of Snafu, to protect himself, like they all did in some shape or form. Eugene had scribbled his thoughts into his bible to preserve some pieces of himself, Burgie had tried to bring as much of his kindness into war as he was capable of and Merriell had decided to lock himself away. Eugene had only caught a glance of him during that time.

They spend the evening together, catching up with their lives. Eugene doesn’t tell him about the time he felt nothing more than anger, thinking that it would be childish. After all Merriell didn’t arrive to a golden cage, like Eugene did. When he had returned, it was to pretty much nothing. He didn’t have the time to sit around and sulk, there was no one who’d pay for his food, his clothes, his housing. His father had died, while he had been overseas and all that was left of him was his old Mercury. So Merriell had loaded the rusty thing with his few belongings and started driving. 

He drove all the way up to Canada in the span of three years, hopping from town to town. Worked all kinds of jobs. As a harvest hand as he made it through the south. At some fast food places in the big cities on the east coast. He tried to be a hunter in the rural Midwest but to Eugene's surprise and slight relief couldn't bring himself to do it for longer than absolutely necessary. He was a lumberjack in the far away north, where he spoke only French for a year, until he got sick of the weather and drove south again, this time with far less stopovers until the wide flat land of Burgies parents farm stretched itself out before his eyes. He had stayed there for longer than he had anticipated, working on the farm, getting to know Burgie's family, even was present when Florence had her first child. But then he got sick of the small town life again and made his way into the west, staying in this town for pretty much the same reasons Eugene did. 

They reconnect and agree on meeting again and it’s so easy, that Eugene almost fears that it’s just a dream. But not even in his wildest dreams would he have assumed, that Merriell would be the one who taught him how to love again.

After they met for like the fifth or sixth time, Merriell tells Eugene that he wants to be together with him and Eugene thinks his eyes will fall out of his head. Why now? And not after they returned home? Why leave him on that train then?

Merriell had laughed softly at those questions, like Eugene hears him laugh often now. It hadn’t been the right time, they weren’t at the right place. They hadn’t had found peace within themselves yet, Merriell tells him. But now they could try.

And so they do. They move in together and it’s not as difficult as Eugene thought it would be. Everything they own fits perfectly into their small apartment. Eugene only took the stuff from his dorm room with him, when he first moved here and Merriell is used to only keep as much as would fit inside his trunk. 

They pass each other off as roommates for some people and act like the couple they are in front of others. Eugene has just started with his doctor’s degree, earning his money with teaching and Merriell works in a gardening and landscaping business. Funnily enough they both made working with flowers and plants their profession. Eugene mostly in theory, Merriell practically. It’s reasonable enough for other people, like Eugene’s parents, that they live together to share the rent. 

Eugene enjoys it greatly. It’s both very much the same and extremely different from their time together in war.

They go to the supermarket together and Merriell drives Eugene insane with the amount of time he spends to check the fruits and vegetables, trying to find the perfect ones, not too ripe,but just ripe enough. And Eugene drives Merriell mad, when he leaves his stuff scattered around their apartment. His plates and socks and assignments. Used to having someone who would clean after him. Merriell wouldn't nanny him, he tells him only once and expects him to tidy up immediately.

They celebrate their first anniversary which Eugene takes very seriously, because Merriell got pretty cranky once, when someone asked them since when they have been together and Eugene didn’t know the date. He bakes a cake which tastes terrible and Mer gets him his favorite flowers and they try to outdo each other every year that follows. 

What still sticks to them of the war gets pushed to the side by the new memories they make together, or soothed by forehead kisses and back rubs, when one of them has an especially bad dream. When he wakes up in the morning and looks at Mer he knows that he can say to him whatever he wants, whatever crosses his mind. Back on those islands, when every day could have been their last, they didn’t talk about the future, they didn’t think they had any, but now they did. He tells Merriell that he loves him everyday, before he leaves for work and the other repeats it to him. It’s hard to believe that Eugene was so angry once, as the years continue.

It only gets more difficult than that, when they get reminded of the world outside their little bubble, containing of people who are part of their community who call themselves pacifists and philanthropists. Containing of rather dimly lit, but familial places where Merriell can put his arm around Eugene. Containing of the few people from their old lives who know about them. Like Burgie and Sid and even Bill Leyden and Jay. They all know what's going on, when they tell them that they moved in together. Burgie writes them a heartfelt letter, reminiscing about their time in war, how he had always wished for them to be happy. Sid sends a basket full of stuff one would gift a newlywed couple and Eugene just knows that Mary had picked it with all the care in the world. 

The last Thanksgiving Dinner Eugene ever spends with his family, reminds him of the fact that not everyone would understand their way of life. He already feels miserable for leaving Merriell behind, when his mother probes him with no mercy about his private life, until she sets him an ultimatum. He either gets married, or they'd stop sending him money for his education. His father issues him an empathetic look, but that’s not enough for Eugene, if he doesn’t stand his ground against his wife, then Eugene would have to do it. He had been fuming in silence for far too long, swallowing all his pride whenever he made it home for peace sake. Got belittled and pitied, when he currently was the happiest he has ever been. He knew he could never look at his own reflection again, if he didn’t stand up for himself. He’d rather be angry at his family for the rest of his life, than be angry at himself again. And so he breaks all bonds with them.

Merriell comforts him after that and everytime Eugene gets sad over it again, but their next Thanksgiving is fantastic. Merriell cooks Gumbo and Eugene gets blackout drunk and they spent the whole next day in bed.

They are in their early forties when they buy their first house together. Eugene finished his degree a while ago, it took him a little longer without his parents financial support, but he made it. Merriell offered him all the help he could and after he took over the gardening business he worked at, they made some good money. 

The house stands in the outskirts of the city, it’s quite during the night and they finally got a garden they can take care of together. Merriell plants some strawberries and Eugene kills them and then they try again. Like they always do, when something doesn't work out for the first time.

But then a conflict escalates and it's war once again. Vietnam. Once again Asia. And the memories of _their_ war get bad again. Eugene is so incredibly angry, that all of this happens over and over again. He starts buying books on the matter, goes to political forums, listens to the radio excessively and even hands out pamphlets at his university. 

That’s when Merriell snaps and tells him to stop that shit. He doesn’t want to hear his constant ranting, he can’t deal with the flashbacks the descriptions of the new war inflict in him. And he tells him that it’s straight up stupid to get this heavily involved in the topic.

Eugene is angry at Merriell then, accuses him of being passive, that his lack of actions would mirror condoning. Merriell only stares at him and tells him to think about what they could risk if they spoke up too loud, if they attracted too much attention, reminded him, that they were extremely privileged in the way they lived their life, that what they did could still get them killed in some parts of the country.

Eugene falls silent then. He didn't consider that. It’s the way he had been raised. The privileged son of a rich, white doctor. The whole world told him, that his opinion mattered, that he could cause a change. That’s the reason why he had joined the war after all. Eugene cheeks are on fire when he gets reminded of his younger self again, of that smugly boy who thought the most honorable thing he could do was to sacrifice himself for his country.

The enemy was clear back then, it were the Nazis, the Japanese, they fought on real land against real humans to bring peace to the world. Eugene could grab his rifle and take actions as did his brothers in arms, thousands and thousands of men fighting for the same cause, men who had his back. 

Now the enemy is almost invisible, he is everywhere. Everything is politics. The enemy is overly powerful and untouchable. And Eugene didn't fight alongside the majority but against it. He couldn’t identify himself with the values of this country anymore, but his opinions didn’t matter that much. Maybe they would have, had he followed his father’s footsteps, had he become a rich old man in the south. But he was a liberal homosexual man in a blue state, his opinion didn’t matter. He'd risk his life if he acted too openly, raised his voice too loudly. Most importantly he risked Merriell’s life at the same time.

He switches to the music station then and he stops handing out papers, but he stays angry and only heals from it slightly, when a brave woman at the other end of the country throws the first stone.

It feels like the whole world changes with that and Eugene and Merriell attend their first protest together in their late forties. Deciding that it would be worth the risk, that it would be a bigger shame to not be part of this growing movement. 

They go to sid-in's, sometimes they are the oldest people there and Merriell laughs when Eugene brings some cushions for them to sit on. They even meet some of Eugene's students and he bails one of them out of jail after they got arrested at a protest. Eugene gets only angry and incredibly scared when they get stopped by some police officers themselves and they keep asking Merriell all these question and tell him he should cooperate or they would take him with them, meanwhile they took one glance at Eugene's face, his pale skin, and left him alone. After they let him go Eugene apologizes over and over again to Merriell for bringing him into this kind of situation, but Merriell tells him that change, like they want it, doesn't come overnight or easily. 

And the liberation comes, in some ways like they wanted to, manifested in bills and laws, protecting their rights. In other ways it's that their community claims more and more places and the young folks seem to celebrate basically everything. Eugene thinks back to his own youth when he had to move several states away to find someplace where he could be himself. Thinks about the fear and prejudice he experienced. There weren't marches and festivals where people like him came together in such large numbers. No one would celebrate with or for him, like they did now and that really heals him from within. To know that there would be kids who grew up thinking it was okay to be themselves. 

The following years feel somewhat like a blissful dream. Merriell grows a beard because it’s the 70’s and squeezes himself into some tight velvet pants which drive Eugene crazy for several reasons. They start traveling, visit Burgie, stay at his farm for a couple of weeks, get to know his family. Burgie still has younger children at home and even his first grandchild and there are a bunch of cousins and nephews and nieces at all times who make the days on the farm a whole lot livelier. Merriell is the fun uncle who carries them around and even plays tag with them, his body aching when he makes it to bed in the evening. And Eugene is the uncle who tells them all he knows about the plants Burgie grows on his land, boring them from time to time. 

At night it falls quiet, so quiet in that little patch of Texas that Eugene thinks he can hear the stars sing. No wonder that boy had such a calming aura even in the middle of war. 

After their visit, Merriell drives him all the way up to Canada, where he had spent some time after the war. It’s nice there, Eugene sketches a lot of the wildlife and Merriell carves him a new pipe after his went missing somewhere on the roads.  
They have sex by a beautiful lake in the middle of the woods, for the first time while being outside after all those years. And it's so much better than the quick rubbing against each other they did back in those foxholes, their teeth sunken into the others flesh to muffle their panting. Now they're kissing and stroking each other and Eugene only looks away from Merriell's face to stare at the moon above them, shining as beautifully and otherworldly as his lover’s eyes. 

When they make it back home, Mer seems to be in new spirits, he wants to adopt a dog. He likes cats better, but he wants to go on walks with it and hikes and he wants to lift some weights. He says he wants to get fitter, now that he has mostly retreated to office work at his business and Eugene doesn't tell him that one needs some meat to their bones before they can gain any muscles. Eugene looks at a beautiful shorthaired pointer at the animal shelter, always drawn to hound dogs, but Merriell tells him to stick his purebred bullshit up his ass and they get cute little mongrel who nearly causes Eugene to have a panic attack when it lays himself on his chest while he sleeps. 

Back at his university, Eugene opens up a little. Years before some students saw him and his "friend" at these protests and nothing bad happened, so he feels like he can talk about Merriell without risking his job or his life anymore. Of course he still refers to him as his roommate and he tells his students how annoying he is most of the time, but he has the notion, that some of them get what he means and it makes him happy to share his life with the few who understand. Communicating to them, that older gay people exist, that a life like theirs is possible and not shameful, that they’re as domestic and idiotic as their parents are.

But his happiness withers and it feels like the world didn’t make any progress at all, didn’t heal from the wounds hate brought upon it, when that virus strikes it.  
It’s devastating to read about it, hear about it, watch about it on TV. But the worst aren’t the reports in the media, even though Mer and Eugene sometimes cling to each other when they hear the numbers over the radio and yet another of the presidents speaks. The worst is the talking in the streets, what they overhear, the hatefulness in people’s hearts. They don’t deserve better, he hears a man in the corner store say when he picks up the newspaper with yet another sensational headline covering the “gay plague”. It’s their rightful punishment from God, the usually nice lady tells him after the sermon. She doesn’t know him, doesn’t know about Merriell and thinks he will agree with her, like a good christian would, in her books. Eugene holds his tongue then, afraid to lose his place in his community or their neighborhood. 

He cries in his office one day, after he got the notice, that one of his students got infected and won’t be allowed to attend university anymore. He calls Sidney who treats some patients with the virus, but he tells him what every news source already told him: that all they could do was accompanying them in their last weeks, or months. He tells Eugene to stay safe, before he hangs up, hateful people started to gather, they besieged his doctor’s office because he is the only doctor in Mobile who would allow people with AIDS to attend his office. Eugene is overwhelmed with the anger he feels at that, yet again, invisible enemy, the virus, that demolished all the progress they had accomplished over the years. The politicians who helped fuel the hate among people. He feels even more in the minority, that no one would listen to, than he felt like when Vietnam was going on.

It’s absolutely horrifying to see how a whole generation of queer people starts to disappear from the face of the world. Many of them won’t even get a proper memorial service, because their bigoted relatives would keep the ones who were dear to them away from the funeral. Eugene thinks about his own family, what they would have done with him. Maybe they would have hastily buried him, without a ceremony, keeping Merriell away from him, denying the man who loved him to grieve his death. Eugene could never heal from the anger he felt for his parents, the sheer disappointment he experienced when his father just went along with what his mother demanded from him. Had he stayed, had he obeyed to them, he would have lost the fight, he would have lived as an empty shell in that house, in that city. The boy he had been long, long gone and the new spark of life inside him, which he claimed himself, which Merriell let become strong and bright over the years, would have never began to grow in him.

Back in Mobile no one would have preserved his memory, like he would have wanted it, like the friends of those who got claimed by the virus did. Preserving their memory in colorful embroidered pieces of fabric, so many of them that it weighs tones, heavy, but not heavy enough to equal the blame that rests on the presidents shoulders. 

After the deaths of some famous, influential people get discussed in the public eye over and over again - sometimes they’re memory is being honored, sometimes they’re getting smeared - more and more people start to pay attention. They may be in the minority, but their voices are loud and clear like they had been in the late sixties and they get joined by some really powerful ones and they won’t stop fighting and that heals Merriell and Eugene from some of the fear that had began to haunt them.

When Eugene’s student dies, he writes a long article in the university intern newspaper together with the friends of the boy which doesn’t leave much room for speculations. Eugene basically writes a manifesto for gay rights, against hate and puts every piece of information about the virus inside it, without demolishing the people who caught it. He cites himself as an ally to all who suffer from the illness, as a member of their community and he publishes it under his real name. He contacts the parents of the boy and they organize a memorial ceremony on campus, Merriell’s business provides thousands of flowers for it and they make a small march through town, Mer and Eugene walking behind the parents in the front with their arms linked.

After Merriell retires they decide to visit their hometowns together. They went to New Orleans a few times, mostly after they visited Burgie and traveled further east after that, but they never went to Mobile. When Sid and Eugene met up, it was Sid who visited him. He just couldn’t face the place where this boy from over forty years ago wandered the streets, where he has always been so unhappy ever since his childhood ended. Couldn’t face the memories which would come to his mind, face someone of his family in the worst case. But Merriell probes him into it. They had a pretty intense argument years ago, when Eugene’s father had died and he wouldn’t go to the funeral. Merriell called him entitled and stubborn, but Eugene couldn't be urged to go and he for sure didn’t attend his mother’s funeral.

It feels a bit like Merriell thinks they’re losing time. That their life together could end soon, which makes Eugene extremely uneasy. They are only in their late sixties. They could continue to live for decades. Still, he doesn’t argue with him when he wants to travel, even when he wants to take the car. Eugene is a little scared to drive this far considering their age and Merriell’s memory which gets a little patchy at times, but he can’t reject him, when he looks at him with that small pleading smile, which looked just the same as it did back in one of their tents, when he had asked him if he could kiss him. 

They stop at several motels and in whichever city they want to. Eugene buys a bunch of trinkets they don’t need and writes postcards to their friends in California but also to Burgie and Sid, Leyden and Jay, telling them about their roadtrip and they call the dog-sitter every evening so that Merriell can coo into the handset. 

New Orleans fills them both with some new life. They even go to the bar where Mer went to in his sweet teen years, acting so abrasive that the barkeeper didn’t dare to ask for his age. He also went there after he got off the train, drinking himself under the table out of frustration.   
Eugene smiles a little at that, so he did regret leaving him on that train, he points out to Merriell. Merriell looks at him as if he was a out of his mind. Of course. Of course he regretted it. He missed him with every fiber of his being, asked himself everyday what could have been, feeling his heart slowly growing cold. He learned how to be on his own, to be content with himself, but he never, not for one day, stopped thinking about Eugene and how that red-headed boy had breathed air into his lungs and warmth into his heart and some salvation into his mind. And he didn’t start to heal from this bone deep aching until he saw him again in that bar, in that city which didn’t hold any connection to them then, but was now their home, was so for decades.

Eugene just straight up cries at the bar after that revelation which he never got before from Merriell, unable to feel shame for it. He just loves this man so much and he’s so glad that they not only reconnected, but that they stayed together, against every trial. He just lets his intense emotions for the other man wash over him, causing the barkeeper to pour them both an empathetic whiskey on the house.

They make it to Mobile at last, going to the cemetery before they do anything else. Sid and Mary would be welcoming them in their home and Eugene is honestly a bit excited to spend some days with his old friend, even more so because he knows Mer isn’t a big fan of Sid, it amuses him.

Merriell has to hold his hand as they make their way over the gravel and Eugene doesn't waste one thought about the fact that he holds another man's hand in bright daylight in this God-fearing town. Eugene recognizes the white marble and black graphite of the family crypt immediately. They stand in front of it, eyes on the table which reads the names of his grandparents, some of his deceased aunts and uncles and their spouses and finally the names of his parents.

To Eugene’s biggest surprise he doesn’t grit his teeth, doesn’t clench his hands into fists. He just feels calm, sure there is this sadness aching through his heart, when he thinks about his childhood. His father on his hands and knees, his sons sitting on his back, while he neighed like a horse, bucking up, making them laugh and scream. He also remembers fondly, when he sat on top of one of the kitchen counters while his mother pickled all kinds of fruits, letting him nibble as much as he wanted, when she forgot to be strict for a little while, kissing his cheeks. He misses them to some extent, always did in all these years, but he doesn't feel any kind of other heavy emotion. He isn’t angry at them anymore. He can’t bring himself to feel angry when he looks at the man next to him.

He’s a little shorter than he had been in his youth, his back a little rounded, his curls streaked with silver lines, his smile lines deep and prominent, telling of a life of sly little smiles and heartfelt laughter. Eugene hopes he is to blame for most of Merriell’s happy moments. The other man sure was to blame for his, he filled him out completely with his warmth, helping him whenever the anger flared up in Eugene, helped him to make amends with himself when he was still young and continued to do so after they met again with every issue that ever occurred, soothing him. 

Eugene feels like he had been healed from all the anger in the world when Merriell catches his eyes and smiles at him, squeezing his hand, reassuring him, that he would always be there for him.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!  
> This is my last fic for Sledgefu Week. I had so much fun doing it!! I got such nice comments, which really warmed my heart :') I'm @stolperzunge on Tumblr where I'll hopefully post an edit for Day 7 ^^
> 
> Kudos, comments and feedback are always greatly appreciated! <3
> 
> Title is a line from the song "Alive In New Light" by IAMX and it fits Eugene so perfectly, as does "Mile Deep Hollow"!


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